IBM and Meta have announced the launch of a new global AI collaboration group.

AI Alliance, which is spearheaded by IBM and Meta and counts over 50 founding members including Nasa, Dell Technologies, Red Hat, Sony, and Imperial College London, is described as a group of leading organisations across industry, startup, academia, research and government coming together to support open innovation and open science in AI.

The key focus of the alliance will centre on fostering an open community and enabling developers and researchers to accelerate responsible innovation in AI while ensuring “scientific rigour, trust, safety, security, diversity and economic competitiveness”, IBM said.

Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta added that the AI Alliance brings together researchers, developers and companies to share tools and knowledge that can “help us all make progress whether models are shared openly or not.”

Clegg concluded: “We’re looking forward to working with partners to advance the state-of-the-art in AI and help everyone build responsibly.”

By bringing together leading developers, scientists, academic institutions, companies, and other innovators, IBM added the group will pool resources and knowledge to address safety concerns while providing a platform for sharing and developing solutions that fit the needs of researchers, developers, and adopters around the world.

To meet its aims, the group plans to start or enhance projects that meet objectives including the responsible advancement of the ecosystem of open foundation models with diverse modalities, support global AI skills building and exploratory research, and fostering a vibrant AI hardware accelerator ecosystem by boosting contributions and adoption of essential enabling software technology.

IBM chairman and chief executive Arvind Krishna described the group’s creation as a “pivotal moment” in defining the future of AI.

"The progress we continue to witness in AI is a testament to open innovation and collaboration across communities of creators, scientists, academics and business leaders,” he said. “IBM is proud to partner with like-minded organisations through the AI Alliance to ensure this open ecosystem drives an innovative AI agenda underpinned by safety, accountability and scientific rigour."

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